Definitive: Your Guide to Surfing’s Best Brawlers!

Who has the piggy face with the DNA to fight? Who can go to a "dark place"?

In honour of all the “How tough is Zeke?” comments in response to his recent video, I’ve created the definitive rankings of how the top 34 would fair in one-on-one street fights against each other.

Several ringers have been included to set the scale.

Go ahead and argue if you didn’t notice the “definitive” part above.

But yeah, definitive.

Luke Rockhold (SCZ) That shin injury that kept him out of UFC 230? Bad luck for the top 34 he now has the time to focus on the WSL. He’d beat up any pro surfer ever, and also your dad when you were in elementary school.

Joel Tudor (LAJ) He’s a love-to-hate personality, but the elite level of his Brazillian Jiu Jitsu is undeniable. You think he’d get punched coming in and crumple, but the guy has mongoose DNA, and his ability to lock any joint from any angle is uncanny.

Michel Bourez (PYF) Stumpy explosive athlete with high level BJJ. He’s the class of the WSL.

Ezekiel Lau (HAW) Archetypal Polynesian football athlete. Probably could have played safety at USC if he’d been interested in making a nickel. Like many Polynesians, I smell in him the ability to roll back his eyes and go to the dark place.

Wade Carmichael (AUS) See Cardoso minus the Brazilian pedigree.

Frederico Morais (PRT) Has a fighter’s frame, appears to know how to generate power and leverage.

Kolohe Andino (USA) Bigger than he acts, and deep under the peanut-gallery-abused exterior there’s an Offspring song dying to thrash whatever’s in front of it. Plus Greek. Greeks are stronger than they look and meaner than they seem. He’d press his thumb into your eye.

John John Florence (HAW) Big kid from a fighty place. Much more of a quick-twitch athlete than he seems. Doesn’t seem to want to fight but could if pressed.

Mick Fanning (AUS) If he managed to take an opponent deeper than a couple of minutes his cardio is unmatched. Big jaw, looks hard to switch off.

Keanu Asing (HAW) Pound for pound favorite, Asing is a tough kid from a brawly culture. Trains some MMA with his bad-ass girl, and ostensibly has carnal relations with her and so steals some of her power (#science). Lacks mass though and might be overwhelmed by bigger opponents.

Connor O’Leary (AUS) Biggest of the younger guys, and it’s said he’s related to Bruce Lee. By racists, but still.

Gabriel Medina (BRA) Physically a super-elite athlete in the stem cell mold. Is very likely very good at everything physical, has a quick and mean mind running the machine.

Joel Parkinson (AUS) Could probably conjure his inner Ocker in a pinch.

Patrick Gudauskas (USA) Maybe you’d break your hand on those teeth and then feel the wrath of a vengeful Lord. But narrow face looks like he’s a high risk for KO.

Jeremy Flores (FRA) Probably the most wrong here. Lot of fight in a small dog but usually that seems to be directed to people not interested in whole-hearted reciprocation. MMA training though floats his cause upward.

Jordy Smith (ZAF) Big strong man but can’t see him setting his jaw and following through all the way.

Adrian Buchan (AUS) He’s here because like his surfing I could think about it all day and still not have an opinion.

Matt Wilkinson (AUS) Wildman with a long reach, but no one can fight on rollerskates.

Adriano de Souza (BRA) The little plumber seems like a pack-a-luncher, but that lunch is only so big.

Sebastian Zietz (HAW) All the hardcore Hawaii local cred, but Seabass seems too essentially good-natured to throw down with conviction.

Paige Hareb (NZL) Have you seen her fights? Tough little bitch with zero quit in her.

Joan Duru (FRA) Slip of a man, but he’s French so maybe if he became offended the Celt deep in his DNA would emerge.

Michael Rodrigues (BRA) He’s so quick, and yet there’s so little of him. But maybe he’d pick a middling opponent apart like an angry ferret.

Italo Ferreira (BRA) Given his backside attack he could throw a vicious roundhouse kick, but given his height at very best it might catch you in the nuts.

Jen See (IOWA) She seems like a mean person trying not to be mean. And could that vertical leap maybe be followed by a snappy kick to the side of the head?

Pottz (ENG) The initial whirlwind you’d face when the ’89 World Champion opened his account would be of consequence, but as long as he didn’t take out his scalpel and jam it in your pocket, after a minute he wouldn’t be able to get back to the power source and peter out on the flats.

Conner Coffin (USA) Look, he could hit you with his guitar, but it’s acoustic.

Tomas Hermes (BRA) All I can give him credit for is being a grown ass man, and as we age we become more shrewd.

Michael February (ZAF) So long, and yet so slow. But I assume South Africa makes you tough given the horrific murder rate and such.

Derek Rielly (AUS) Probably could generate some leverage when he turns those wide coat-hanger shoulders, but not a lot of baseline grunt supporting any of it.

Jesse Mendes (BRA) Honestly I don’t really know who he is.

Chas Smith (COOS) A coffee-table jumping fugue-state can take over at any moment, and hands are long enough to establish a solid choke. Still though he looks like scientists went into a lab to invent a physique maximally adapted to getting knocked the fuck out.

Caio Ibelli (BRA) Has a pretty girlfriend.

Owen Wright (AUS) Knocked out duck diving isn’t a good sign.

Yago Dora (BRA) He seems like he’d slap instead of punching.

Kelly Slater (LMR) In 0-1 fight record, he folded like a house of cards after the first semi-stiff jab. That never goes away.

Filipe Toledo (BRA) Phil is lover, not a fighter. Bet his pops could knock some teeth out though.

Kanoa Igarashi (JPN) In a high wind he couldn’t walk to the ring.

Ashton Goggins (VAJ) See Kelly Slater, and then imagine that as a whiny old lady. And then imagine that having its fist thrust in the air victorious over Ashton Goggins’ limp corpse as the Orange County Sheriff races to the scene.

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Better to destroy everything than surrender… | Photo: Monster Children

Surf Quiz: “Are you a high-level kook?”

Who can forget Dane Reynolds’ effortless sweep of everything bad from last week? According to Reynolds, cities are soulless voids, Kelly Slater is too serious about a bat-and-ball game, the WSL’s Instagram exploits surfing and so on.

Dane is a great champion and while he isn’t surfing’s golden pet anymore, his opinions on surf do cut heavily.

Toward the end of his little short, he defines a kook as this:

“I hate…kooks. And I don’t mean that, it has to do with your level of surfing. I define ‘kook’ as a lack of awareness, someone who is utterly unaware of their surroundings, unaware if they’re cutting in line or being obnoxious or annoying people around them. That’s a kook.”

This definition is an overhead smash, I think.

And it made me consider other behaviours that define a surfer as a high-level kook.

These include:

Still arguing the point that rotations must be counted exactly as per the geometric scale. Air 360s instead of 540s, 810s instead of 720s. If the science of climate change is settled, as is common opinion, we can now say the same for airs.

Examining the judges sheets at a local boardriders’ event and claiming your threes should be three-fives etc.

Behaving as if the world has suddenly fallen off its axis if a beginner tumbles off his board near you.

You say there are surfers at your local beach better than guys (and girls) on the WCT and that a surf industry conspiracy keeps ’em out of the spotlight.

Going leashless on a crowded day. “I never fall off.”

Turning sessions at remote reefs into some sort of WQS heat, paddling for everything, sighing at people missing waves, grunting etc.

Like the princess and the pea, you say you can feel even minute differences in your surfboard.

An obsession with personal surf shots.

You self-identify as a “surfer”.

You refuse to travel anywhere unless there’s a coastline with rideable waves

Listen: “Surf shaming is working at the very highest level!”

The sun has just poked its head into Cairo’s hazy sky and my eyes are burning red. 20-odd hour flights are hell on the eyes, skin, etc. but it’s what we suffer, no? The best surf is always a 20-odd hour flight away unless you happen to live in Australia and then it is very close but America and Europe are far.

There is no real winning, only 20-odd hour flights at every turn.

I’ve got a job to do here, anyhow, and have to get out amongst it but before I do can we talk about surf shaming? I stopped by the Surfrider Foundation on my way to the airport yesterday to chat with David Lee Scales about all manner of thing but also about the World Surf League President of Content, Media and WSL Studios-elect Mr. Erik “Elo” Logan.

He is going to get on a 20-odd hour flight soon, for Fiji, and he is very excited but do you what? It seemed there, on his Instagram feed, that he felt surfing’s collective sigh and dropped the paddle.

Can you believe? Can you even believe? Is there someone installed, or almost installed, in Santa Monica’s High Castle who listens to our pleas?

Just think of the power! Think of all we can accomplish by employing the tool of shame!

Oh.

I just went back to his Instagram feed and see that he has picked up the paddle once again and is running down the line of the World Surf League’s other favorite. A walled closeout.

Damn it. We were close but maybe there is a crack?

You can listen about surf shaming, Joe Rogan, wedding rings and…. jet-lag is really clouding my memory but it is for certain our best one yet.

Announcement: Chas Smith has fled to the Middle East!

Well son of a bitch if I ain’t very boozed with two Americanos thrown on top in order to throw the Islamist boarding agents off my tail.

Yes, I’m headed back to the Middle East and it has been far far far too long. Very far too long but it feels like yesterday that I was doing this same exact dance.

I can’t tell you why I’m going, not to be needlessly secretive, only that I am and only to apologize.

The Middle East used to be my rising and setting sun. Now it is only part of my past with surf replacing.

But do any youthful passions ever actually get replaced? Where do dreams go when they die?

I don’t know.

If I did I’d be in that dream graveyard sleeping the dreamiest sleep. Feeling accomplished instead of failed. Living the unencumbered life exactly like Garrett McNamera or Erik Logan.

Well, c’est la vie as they say.

We are surf journalists now and proud but the past, rearing its head, can’t be ignored and that’s why I apologize to you because maybe it should be ignored. Probably it should be ignored but I ain’t nor will I ever.

Middle East über alles though I will catch you on the flipside, hundreds of thousands of miles from anyone who cares.

So long and God bless. Viva the youthful passions.

(Editor’s note: Chas will be writing when he can from Cairo and surrounds where he has been called on urgent personal business. Hopefully, all will, or can, be revealed in a week or so.)